Parasite Library Re-Uses Old Pay Phones

Pay phones are a dying breed in the streets of of New York City (and other cities). But is this a problem or an opportunity?

New York City counts some 13,659 pay phones. Most of them are hardly used and beg for new functions. Architect John Locke is the man behind the Department of Urban Betterment, a New York-based interventionist project that is repurposing phone booths into communal libraries or book drops. Although we’ve already seen several efforts to transform old phone booths into book shops, this project is interesting as it is a parasite that uses the existing construction while leaving the phone itself untouched and fully operable. Furthermore, the installation is easy to remove.

Young children that are raised in the cellphone era might not understand what these crazy public phone booths in public space are meant for. Pay phones can be considered relics of a time in which shared public facilities were characterizing public spaces. With this miniature parasite library, Locke searches for a new public use for these intriguing artifacts. Although a next generation kids might also not understand the concept a library with hardcopy books on the shelves…

As cities are incredibly complex, so must be any sort of urban sustainability, which can come in many more forms than a ‘Green City’. With so much going on in an urban environment, there’s bound to be some excess energy flows. So why waste that energy, if you can turn it into something that’s better, fun, and productive? That’s what we call Parasite Urbanism — strategies and urban interventions that creatively make use of spaces or energies that otherwise would be neglected or would go to waste, contributing to a wider concept of urban sustainability. Let’s take a look at three of the best examples of urban parasites that we’ve highlighted on the Pop Up City. They all make use of a variety of otherwise neglected spaces or energy, launching them into places that are more useful, more productive and more fun!

The use of phone booths is declining. (I know I’m beating a dead horse now.) Even tourists favor buying a cheap-ass prepaid phone instead of visiting a phone booth when they want to make a call. Phone booths are an old, location-dependent concept, so we have a serious surplus of them on the streets and…

Amsterdam-based artist Leonard van Munster (also known as the man behind this wicked vertical campsite) has made this little movable room completely consisting of green BASF isolation material. As a consequence of this material and the design, no external heating is needed to make the room a comfortable place to sleep in. For the project,…

“What if you could run through the city and capture all buildings? What if you could take over the buildings of your opponent to expand your territory?” A group of students from the Hochschule der Künste in Zürich, Switzerland, took twelve days to develop an exciting hyper-local location-aware game entitled Urban Defender. Inspired by gangs…